The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows
by gibrelina
Summary: Johanna helps Finnick out after a day which clearly wasn't bad enough to keep him from grinning. What if underneath every accident there's something worth finding?


_Disclaimer: I know this may come out as a surprise, but I do not own the Hunger Games._

_Warning: Cursing, drugs, and lots of talk about sex (the consensual and the not-so-consensual type)._

_Spoilers: Minor, but yes. If you haven't read Mockingjay, better not risk reading this._

_Oh and just a little something: When they say something is gross or whatever, that's their opinion and not mine. I just think the Districts are way more conservative than our 2011 world and the Capitol is way less conservative than our 2011 world. So yeah._

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><p><strong>The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows<strong>

"Are we having a little meeting?"

Finnick throws the door open like he wants to tear it off its hinges.

His eyes are half closed and his hair is glued to his skin with sweat. There's something odd with the way he walks and even his voice sounds off. He is a wreck so it's not surprising when Brutus grabs his arm and turns him around to access whatever damaged was done. The surprise comes when Finnick - nice, usually mild, well-adjusted Finnick - elbows him hard on the gut and kicks 200 pounds of Brutus to the floor.

Wow. He must be in a hell of an adrenaline rush, Johanna thinks.

"Finnick!" Seeder exclaims in her best motherly voice.

Finnick doesn't seem all that scared even thought Brutus can probably crush him with his toe. He actually finds a way to make it even worse by pointing his finger at the larger man and confirming Johanna's theory that her friend has just lost his marbles when he shouts, "Don't you fucking touch me!"

Brutus is standing up, without a doubt planning to bash Finnick's head in, when Haymitch gives him a friendly pat on the shoulder, followed by a chuckle.

Good old Haymitch. Always the suicidal one.

Luckily Brutus is just as put out as everyone else and that gives Haymitch a few seconds to start pushing their mad friend out the door. He's drunk enough not to care that Finnick keeps trying to land a blow.

"I think the boy needs a drink!"

Oh dear, the last thing he needs is a drink. Johanna has a suspicion he already had one too many; so with the scariest expression she can manage she turns to the rest of the people in the room so they won't follow and then walks outside, staring at Finnick with just as much anger.

"What's wrong with you?"

"Fuck you."

"Not an answer." Haymitch pipes in merrily.

They press 4 inside the elevator.

"Are you drunk?" Johanna snaps at Finnick.

"None of your business."

"Are you drunk?" Haymitch asks like a father really proud of his son's achievement.

Finnick storms off as soon as the elevator stops on the fourth floor and walks to his room. Johanna sighs annoyed with herself as she follows. There's not a lot of people she considers friends in her life, and while Finnick can annoy the hell out of her sometimes, he's definitely one of them.

When she enters the room, pulling Haymitch along because he can barely stand, Finnick is leaning against the wall. Eyes closed and mouth half-open. She shoves Haymitch towards the bed where he mumbles many things that make absolutely no sense to anyone who has less then 80% of their blood made of alcohol.

"I don't care if you're acting like a dickhead. And I don't care if I have to force-shower you, because you know you need to look presentable tomorrow."

"I don't want to look presentable." Finnick whines.

"Tough." Johanna says curtly and tries to pry him off the wall. He flinches out of her grasp with less violence than before and marches to the bathroom. Or he would have, if he could walk in a straight line. Instead, he just sort of knocks his head on a cabinet as he stumbles in.

"Let's get your clothes off."

This makes him laugh and mutter something that maybe Mags would understand, since they have some dead-fish-mumble language deal going on.

Johanna starts unbuttoning his shirt and the body behind it is telling. She almost feels bad for being so harsh on him, but well, someone has to keep him on his toes right? She tugs on his belt and for a second he makes the low sound of a dying cat. Then he opens his eyes, sees it's only her and starts to chuckle again. His pants are stained in strategical places with things she really doesn't want to think about. The whole situation is making her sick.

Oh what would the fan girls says if they knew undressing Finnick Odair is making her feel like vomiting?

But the thing is, it makes it too easy to see the truth. The small bruises all over the place. Red angry marks she would call anything, but love bites, mixed with lipstick around his neck. Some on his inner thighs, disappearing inside his black boxer briefs like a vile scarring.

Finnick has closed his eyes again and looks ready to fall asleep standing right there.

"Tough night?" she asks pulling his pants down.

"Fucking disgusting night." he mumbles and then opens one of his eyes, "Don't worry, I can't fall asleep. I tried, but..."

"You took something, didn't you?" it comes out angrier than she wants to.

"Yeah. Something, something, _speed_."

"You took some _speed_? Do you realize you aren't going to asleep until next year? Why would you do that, you moronic dumbass?" She snaps looking up from her crouching position as she tries to lift his leg to remove his pants.

"Too many girls and I'm only human." he snaps through gritted teeth.

She misses easy-going Finnick already.

"More than two?" She raises an eyebrow. "I thought you didn't do that."

"I do anything I'm asked and you know that." He runs a hand through his hair and it stick in every end. "I'm so...deadly tired."

"Well, you can cross sleeping from your things-to-do for the next 2 days if you took _speed." _

She finally manages to get both of his legs free from his pants and thinks about removing the underwear, but then brushes it off. She can't explain rationally why she doesn't because it's not like either of them has any problem with nakedness. She is sure Finnick won't complain either, because he can barely open his eyes, but something stops her.

If she knew being nice was this confusing, she wouldn't have gone for the route.

"I hate sex." He says as she turns the shower on. "Before I had sex, I only thought about having sex and now that I have sex, I only think about how to get out of doing it."

"That's nice." Johanna humors him; finding it very hard to push an uncooperative 6 foot 5 person inside a stall when you are as short as a sapling. "But you never had real sex."

Finnick grins, "I know hundreds of people who'd disagree with you."

"Good to know your self-deprecating sense of humor still is all the rage." She rolls her eyes as she forces him under the steam of warm water. "You don't look too stable. Sit down."

He obeys. There's a loud splash of cloth against the shallow water at the bottom. For the first time he opens his eyes all the way. You could search the whole world and never find quite the right shade.

"Thanks, for - you know."

Johanna pulls her shirt off and throws it on the sink, accepting her pants are already ruined. Then she sits down, indian style in front of him, offering a plain bar of soap. "You gave Haymitch a bath more than once. I think you deserve some help on the once-in-a-lifetime event when you get high. Soap the lipstick off."

He starts to rub the bar on his neck with considerably less strength than the necessary to get sticky girly things clean. Great. Johanna is sure he was much stronger when he was pulling a Good Old Suicidal Haymitch against Brutus.

"They kept singing something, you know?" He looks up at her, suddenly very young with his reddish brown mop mated down and pouting red lips. If she lies to herself, she can almost believe Finnick is a little kid whose bloodshot eyes only came from shampoo spraying on the wrong place. That the red on his body is nothing more than finger paint.

Johanna has never been good at lying to herself though.

"It was a bachelorette party." he offers her a weak smile. "Bachelorette slash bad porno."

"Huh, so they paid millions for what? So you could strip?"

"I wish."

He sounds truthful, which is odd because Johanna can't for the life of her imagine Finnick, the friend, doing any sort of sensual dancing. But oh well, surely he has many personalities out there. Like Kiss-Ass Finnick when he is around Mags and will do anything he dreams she wants, Hot-Without-a-Shirt for the television, which doesn't require much thought, and Extremely-Annoying-Guy-Who-Won't-Even-Let-You-Take-A-Shit-By-Yourself Finnick when he meets someone new and tries every trick in the book to get you to slap him.

"Stripping is way less...tiring and...Fucked up. They made a line so I'd, you know, make their money worth it."

"Well that's slutty." Johanna scowls, and as the water drips down on their heads, she pulls the soap from Finnick's hand to starts scrubbing his neck herself. "And I'm not even talking about you."

"And they were singing about shooting it on the bride. Fuck six girls in a row and shoot it on the bride. Something like that, I can't remember because I had taken the..."

"_Speed_."

"Yeah, the _speed_."

They are quiet for a moment. Mostly because Johanna is not paying as much attention to what Finnick is saying as she's trying to clean the damn purple and red lipstick off his skin. It's glittery and shiny, Capitol-y and annoying and she's so _angry_ at them. Stupid bimbos. The water slides from his body in a rainbow of sparkly colors. For some reason that only makes the whole situation feel more miserable.

"Wait, shoot the bride? What were they on about?"

Finnick snorts and looks at her with a silent are-you-serious. She is, though. She could snap at him saying that while slang names in orgies are his second nature, she has a healthy sex life - at least when in comparison - thank you very much. Only she doesn't say any of that for the same reason she let him keep his underwear.

"They meant," he raises a hand as if she's supposed to understand it magically just with that, "You know, blow my load - on the bride's face...shooting it, get it?"

The sentence is so incoherent, Johanna blinks for a moment, but then she makes the same face he is doing. "Ew, Finnick! On her face?"

"I _know_!" he shakes his head. "They paid for that!"

"Freaks!"

Finnick seems overly amused by her shock. She probably shouldn't ask how many times they have asked him for things like that if she wants to keep her mind a safe place.

Well, resonably safe place, really.

"I don't know why I'm complaining about cleaning lipstick off. She's probably having a harder time cleaning...you off."

She's actually not that revolted anymore, but it's nice to see Finnick looking like himself again. All dimples and big smiles.

"One day, if you get married, when you've done everything you can imagine with your husband, you're going to get bored. And then you're going to remember this moment and let him do it." Finnick says wisely.

"No, I'm not."

"You will." Finnick raises his chin cockily.

She pulls his legs, stretching them out in front of him so that she can start cleaning them. He's very much like a rag doll. She's not sure if it is because he's tired and high or because he is used to people bossing his body around. She'd rather believe is the former.

Johanna has never been good at lying to herself though.

"That's like saying you are going to let your girl poke you down the funny hole when you're forty."

Finnick doesn't look as disturbed as she hoped for. "That's not going to happen because I'll be forever single and my hymen will grow back after awhile of debauchery-less existence."

"Your hymen can't grow back because you're male." says Johanna.

"Does it grow back on females?"

"You're back to being annoying. You might be getting better already."

Finnick puts a hand to his heart in mock hurt, "You wound me! I'm a joy to be around!"

"Yeah. I love it. Especially when you're telling me where you _blow your load_."

"I'm sorry if I say things unworthy of a lady's ear. That's only because I confuse you with a male sometimes. Your hair is pretty short and you got manly arms."

He raises his hand to pull at her hair, and she slaps it away quickly.

"Say you, girly eyelashes." She barks back scrubbing his right leg, probably pulling a layer of skin off. She must have friends in high places because Finnick isn't complaining about it yet.

Or maybe she just has a high friend. Tomato, tomato.

"I'm the epitome of manly." He wiggles his eyebrows confidently, and unfortunately there's nothing she can say about that. Finnick is broad-shouldered, with big boat feet and enough muscle in his arms. The moron probably has manly wrists if that's possible.

Oh. Mistake. There is one thing she can say to attack his masculinity.

"You wax. I can't even go into how girly-"

"I don't wax!" he protests on his behalf, looking affronted, "_They_ wax me, and it's not like I have that much body hair anyway."

"You don't have much body hair. That's not your greatest defense, brainless."

"I'd show you I do have body hair, but I think it'd be unfortunate if you had to see that particular part of my body in the state it is in." he shakes his head with funeral eyes. "It's probably...dead."

"Like your brain." She smirks. The soap finally comes in contact with the streaks in his chest. This time Finnick does flinch.

"Careful! That actually hurt!" he stares down at himself touching it gingerly, "Shit. Some girls' nails in the Capitol, they're...mutts or something. I'd rather have a go at Enobaria's teeth."

She watched Finnick's Hunger Games and she's pretty sure he had a bone poking out of his arm. She makes it a point to ignore him making a big deal out of a scratch wound. Done by nails. Human nails.

What a whimp.

"Actually I don't. There was a girl who had four teeth like hers." he shudders, "I don't even know how I went through with it when I spent most of the time thinking how to kill her and leave no clues if she tried to give me head."

Johanna frowns, "You've got so much lipstick on you, if we shoved you in a chariot they'd think it's body paint."

"I think they think it turn guys on." He mumbles, rubbing his eyes and yawning. "Go figure. They think looking like an actual tigress is the way to go."

Speed is an odd drug, sending you from the heights of anxiety to depressingly calm states of mind, when you just want to fall asleep, but your brain won't shut down.

She knows it because she has taken it once.

"Okay. You might want to close your eyes." she says as she drips shampoo on his hair. "Can I ask you something that might be terribly insensitive of me?"

He nods as soapy liquid slides over his eyelids."Shoot."

"How do you do it?" She whispers because she doesn't want the audio to pick that up. "How do you get turned on? I mean, I've seen the woman around here and they are complete weirdoes with freak body implants."

She thinks it might have been quite insensitive because Finnick doesn't answer and he goes somewhat rigid. She knows it because she's washing his hair and her elbows brush his body on the shoulders.

"Just so you know, 'because I'm a guy' is a valid answer in my book."

He tries to open his eyes, but the shampoo is still bubbling so he shuts them.

"Well, I'll admit you don't know what performance anxiety is until it's either getting it up or someone dropping dead - and sometimes they do look like a half-walrus, half-rabbit, but whatever. A body is a body and it's not like I ever had it any other way."

His voice is dead and removed and Johanna regrets asking, because there's not a lot to say without throwing a pity party or being even more insensitive.

"Well, you will." She says taking a page from his book. "When you get tired of being a lonely bachelor you will discover the wonders of a roll in the sack."

"I don't think I have anything to discover. You are the one who didn't know -"

"- Of a nice _consensual_ roll in the sack, Finnick! Can you just shut up and listen for once? Urgh!"

He lets his head drop to the wall tiredly and grabs her by the waist, pulling her to his side and chuckling as she tries to free herself, kicking his shins. "See? So manly. Girls love when they are pulled by the waist."

"Well, maybe your freak half-walrus girls do!"

"No. All girls." he mumbles closing his eyes again and his head drops to her shoulder. He will probably move out of the position with a terrible crick on his neck because she's terribly short for a girl and he is terribly tall for a guy.

"You don't know that."

"I know a lot about girls."

"You do?" she says distractedly turning the shower off because he is clean enough. Besides, he looks ready to drop, even though he won't.

"Yeah. I sort of envy you." he mumbles against her shoulder and the warm breath sends unwanted shivers.

"You envy girls? Well, that's a point to the girly list."

He nods and his hair tickle her ear. "Girls don't need to get off on it - less fucked up like that."

She wonders if she should tell him to shut up and go up a notch in the insensitive rope. It doesn't sound wise to be talking about the root of Finnick's problems with President Snow in an audio without the shower as cover. Maybe the guy will start dissing Snow and they'll be over their heads in trouble. He looks out of it enough for that.

He talks again before she makes up her mind. His voice comes muffled by her skin and other less tangible things. "Also, when you girlies get forced, you get to call it rape."

And all of sudden, like a snap of someone's finger, she's filled with a brand new surge of anger - which isn't unknown for her - and a desire to change things. Seeing as she can't walk up to Snow's house and throw him off the window or break his skull in two with a big heavy axe, she moves to what she _can_ do. Getting Finnick up.

Of course, that turns out to be harder than she thought.

He's mostly dead weight. He does take the steps, but his feet aren't more cooperative than the rest of his body, banging into corners and such. She hits her head on the doorframe and curses. She curses even more when she sees Haymitch asleep on Finnick's bed. There's no way she can move him without letting Finncik drop.

She lets Haymitch keeps the bed, fuming silently, and guides Finnick to the couch on the corner of the room. He falls down on it happily. She snorts because he looks ridiculous. She couldn't work the drying thing with both hands holding Finnick so he is as wet as a dog and, even cuddling a little, nothing from his knees down fit on the green couch.

Johanna thinks it's a wonder anyone can see him as anything, but Finnick. Annoying, easy-going, loud Finnick who is screwed for life because he is defending a seventy-year-old woman who he isn't even related to. Johanna is kind of a bitch herself, but Finnick, deep down, is a big hearted moron. How fucked up does a person have to be to make someone who's atually that _nice _do anything against their will? Do they think it's enjoyable for both parties? Are they that deluded?

Johanna has never been good at lying to herself so she admits she knows why all this bullshit happens. Because people only see what they want to see. Whether it is a murderous girl, a good-for-nothing drunkard, a sex god, or a reality tv show about kids killing each other for their entertainment.

What she sees won't ever matter. The only thing that matters are actions. Something good to balance out all the shit that has happened to them. Something big has to happen. Something that will blow them all away. And while it doesn't, she'll have to settle for anything she can do to make the balance a little heavier on their side.

Finnick blinks when she throws the blanket over him, but she shuts him up quickly with a glare.

She'll probably have to be extra awful to everyone tomorrow to atone today.

"Rest. If you get all wired up again, get some coffee. I know it sounds like the worst idea, but trusts me, they'll cancel each other out."

She's not sure he has heard her until he looks up from half-open eyelids, amusement clear in his weak voice. "Aren't we bossy today,"

She gives him a look that calls him childish and pats his head strong enough to leave a headache before leaving, closing the door loudly behind her. A smirk on her lips as she walks away, wearing a bra and drenched pants. She can't say he looks any better, like in movies, when people smile and then they glow. Not even Finnick Odair can pull that off so quickly.

He is a wreck on the outside. Finnick looks like shit warmed over, and probably will look like that for at least another day and a half. The red in his eyes will take the fun out of the green for awhile.

And if you get past Extremely-Annoying-Guy-Who-Won't-Even-Let-You-Take-A-Shit-By-Yourself Finnick and actually get to know the nice son of a gun - if you really stick around, that is - you might find out he's also more of a wreck inside than he likes to admit. But all the same, there still is an irritating grin hiding under all the wreckage.

If Finnick can do that, maybe everything can. What if underneath every accident there's something worth finding? If you try, you might find something beautiful behind every cover-up story. What if looking past a disaster can get people to discover new species of flowers? And if wreckages are like Finnick, with chinks in the armor revealing something hopeful, she will make sure she finds the weak spot.

Because somewhere, maybe far away or maybe here, there might be a hidden smile growing under the wreckage of Panem.

Maybe right in this very moment.

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><p><em>So keep the blood in your head<br>And keep your feet on the ground  
>Today's the day it gets tired<br>Today's the day we dropped out  
>Give up my body and bed<br>All for an empty hotel  
>Wasting words on lowercases and capitals<em>

_Brand New- The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows_

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><p>AN: I have no idea where this came from. Johanna and Finnick are my favorite characters and it's very hard to figure them out because we mostly saw them traumatized in Mockingjay. But well, I did try.


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